4 P’s to Competent Communication

"Making the world a better place one interaction at a time."

Please consider the following effective practices to put into place to become a more competent communicator personally and professionally: 

1. Pause - Excellent communication starts with stopping first. There are great rewards for avoiding knee-jerk reactions. They call them "knee-jerk" because a lot of times a jerk is exactly how you feel afterwards... Pausing gives us more time (to perceive and predict) which often gives us more options (before we proceed).

2. Perceive - The additional time that pausing produces affords us more opportunity to truly "see" what is happening in the moment. It's to our benefit to look beyond the surface; to look just underneath the obvious. Heightened perception often leads to new perspectives that help to better (predict) how best (to proceed). 

3. Predict - Next, ask yourself: "What's happened just before, or is likely to happen just after this encounter?" Educated predictions about pertinent circumstances or situations leading up to, and/or following our interactions result from first (pausing) and then (perceiving).  

4. Proceed - Once we've taken an extra second (pause), sought to really "see" (perceive) the nuances, surmised (predict) what came before and what may come next, it's now time to take the next step (proceed). Executing the first three P's FIRST, now position us to make the best decisions and the smartest moves next.

A lot of people do this backwards. When interacting with others they often jump right to #4. They first react and proceed impulsively, and only then do they pause, perceive, and predict how to undo what they did... after the fact.

This cycle then becomes a vicious circle starting over again and again... producing similar and  results.

To avoid this, the most competent communicators are proactive rather than reactive.

Proactive communication requires employing the 4 P's in order ongoing, within every interaction.

Doing so has the potential to make the world a better place one interaction at a time...

©2011 Tom Leu